


Long Shadows

by Lexen (bluedragoninamber)



Series: A Magical Rainbow:  A Collection of All My Rare Pair Romance Stories [8]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Personal Growth, Post-Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Epilogue, Psychological Trauma, References to Depression, Triggers, marriage relationship, repost
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 09:54:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20207803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluedragoninamber/pseuds/Lexen
Summary: After the Final Battle, Lucius and Narcissa deal with the long shadows of war.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please Read: This story is mine. I am the original and only author. It was first posted on FFN more than five years ago. I don’t remember exactly when. I took all my stories down off the internet and left the HP fandom due to personal reasons. I am now returning to the fandom and reposting some of my old stories. When I posted these stories on FFN, my penname was Lexen (and sometimes Hope4astalemate and bluedragoninamber) though I usually went by Lex. To repeat, this story is mine. Please don’t claim I have stolen it from someone else. Also, please don’t ask me to repost a particular story. I will be reposting only those stories which I choose to repost, and I will only be reposting them here.

** Disclaimer ** **: I don’t own it, and I am making no money off of it. **

** AN ** **: This drabble series takes place after the war. I have established that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are placed on house arrest for a year as punishment, along with being made to pay a great deal of money. These drabbles explore the aftermath of the trauma of war, Lucius’s time in Azkaban, and Lucius and Narcissa’s relationship. It is rated teen for dark themes, PTSD, and a few vague references to self-harm. It was written for Rayne. The theme for this drabble was lamp.**

Lucius Malfoy had learned long ago not to be afraid of the dark. As a child, his father had refused to allow the house elves to leave lamps lit at night, even in the nursery.

“He’s a pureblood and my heir. No son of mine will ever be so weak as to be afraid of the dark,” Abraxas declared.

And so infant Lucius cried out in the dark and received no comfort. Adult Lucius had done the same to Draco. 

But now, Lucius left a lamp lit in the master bedroom when he went to sleep. Now, Lucius ordered lights to be lit in every part of the house where he was at night. Now, Narcissa said nothing about her husband’s need for light but held him like a mother would a child when he woke up screaming from his nightmares. 

And now, when Draco quietly asked his father if he too might keep a lamp lit in his bedroom, Lucius agreed without question, not meeting his son’s eyes but resting a hand on his shoulder in the closest thing to an embrace that Lucius Malfoy usually managed. When Draco reached out and caught him awkwardly, pulling him close, and Lucius happened to hug his son back, there was no one around to bear witness to his weakness. Lucius wondered when he himself had become the child scared of the dark. When had Draco gotten so tall, and when had Lucius ceased to be the all-knowing father?

Lucius woke up screaming, and Narcissa tried to banish the terror that all the lamps in the world could not put to rest. 

There was no light in Azkaban, and the light of the war had been only flames and flashes of sickly green.


	2. Chapter 2

** Disclaimer ** **: I don’t own it, and I am making no money off of it. **

** AN ** **: This drabble series takes place after the war. I have established that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are placed on house arrest for a year as punishment, along with being made to pay a great deal of money. These drabbles explore the aftermath of the trauma of war, Lucius’s time in Azkaban, and Lucius and Narcissa’s relationship. It is rated teen for dark themes, PTSD, and a few vague references to self-harm. It was written for Rayne. The theme for this drabble was stuffed.**

Months after Azkaban, Lucius still found that cushions, pillows, and mattresses felt strange. Anything stuffed had been nonexistent in Azkaban, barring perhaps the occasional meal stuffed with maggots or rats.

There was a reason that Lucius now surreptitiously checked all his food before eating it.

Most pieces of furniture in the manor were stuffed, and Lucius found himself having to relearn all over again how to sit in them.

Sometimes, he didn’t sit in them at all. Even his bed wasn’t wholly welcoming. When Narcissa woke in the middle of the night and Lucius was not beside her, she learned to check the floor beside their bed. She would often find him there, curled up in a ball, tangled in the green blanket that Narcissa had covered herself with when she was pregnant with Draco.

When she could, she would wake him. Lucius had been a light sleeper until Azkaban. Now, it took much more effort to wake him before he was ready to wake. Narcissa wondered if his body was making up for lost time. In Azkaban, sleep had meant danger and fear. Dementors liked to take their meals while the prisoners were sleeping. 

When she could not wake Lucius and she was too tired to attempt a levitation charm, she would take a blanket from the bed and curl up on the floor against him. And even deeply asleep, he always moved to cling to her.

Neither of them spoke about it…but Lucius took care to show her, even to tell her in words, that he loved her now, as he had rarely done before.

At night, no one could see his shame, but in the morning, she did her best to kiss it away.

“We will be safe together,” she whispered into his ear. 

Lucius could not cry, but when he trembled in her arms, she held him tight.

“Shhh…” she said, just as she had soothed Draco when he was an infant. “Shhh.”

And curled up on a hard wooden floor, they slept.


	3. Chapter 3

** Disclaimer ** **: I don’t own it, and I am making no money off of it. **

** AN ** **: This drabble series takes place after the war. I have established that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are placed on house arrest for a year as punishment, along with being made to pay a great deal of money. These drabbles explore the aftermath of the trauma of war, Lucius’s time in Azkaban, and Lucius and Narcissa’s relationship. It is rated teen for dark themes, PTSD, and a few vague references to self-harm. It was written for Rayne. The theme for this drabble was pet.**

“I was his pet…his stray, unwanted pet. I had my uses, but he discarded me, discarded us all, in the end.”

Narcissa said nothing, just sat on the couch and listened as Lucius ranted and raved and paced back and forth across the floor. When Lucius got like this, she might as well not even have been in the room. He was blind to everything except for the racing thoughts in his own mind.

But she stayed. Sometimes, he would turn on himself, and then she had to be there to summon whatever object he had found to hurt himself with. Sometimes, it was his own wand. Of course, it was a replacement. He’d never gotten his own back after the Dark Lord had taken it. The Ministry had allowed Lucius to get a new one but, like most second wands, it was not a perfect fit. Sometimes, Narcissa swore that her husband’s new wand **wanted** to hurt him.

She rebuked herself sternly for her Moody-like paranoia, but there were days that she wondered why the Dark Mark remained, albeit very faded, on the forearms of her husband and her son. The Dark Lord was dead. She had seen him die.

But she would be looking over her shoulder for the rest of her life. 


	4. Chapter 4

** Disclaimer ** **: I don’t own it, and I am making no money off of it. **

** AN ** **: This drabble series takes place after the war. I have established that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are placed on house arrest for a year as punishment, along with being made to pay a great deal of money. These drabbles explore the aftermath of the trauma of war, Lucius’s time in Azkaban, and Lucius and Narcissa’s relationship. It is rated teen for dark themes, PTSD, and a few vague references to self-harm. It was written for Rayne. The theme for this drabble was ring.**

In Azkaban, Lucius had not been allowed to wear his Malfoy lordship ring or even his wedding ring. It was just another tool for breaking down prisoners. Azkaban attempted to shatter as thoroughly as possible every loving familial and fraternal bond a prisoner possessed. Every indication of social standing was stripped away, and even one’s own name was replaced by a number. 

Some managed to hold onto their bonds. For some, it was what kept them sane. Some, like Bellatrix, had shattered completely. Lucius had spent each night in Azkaban staring down at his bare hands, imagining the rings that should have been resting there in such a degree of detail that he came perilously close to hallucinating their presence. 

Every night, he had seen those rings on his fingers and had filled his mind with images of Narcissa on their wedding night, of his father on the day that he had presented his son with his lordship ring. Every night, he had seen Draco’s face as it would look on the day that he did the same for his son as Abraxas had done for him. 

He had not dared to smile, not with the Dementors so near, but the images had brought him an echo of warmth in that place of cold, empty darkness.

When he had escaped Azkaban, in the hurried return to his wife, son, and a manor that was no longer theirs, the first things he had sought were his rings.

And he had turned to find Narcissa standing there, holding them out to him.

“I kept them safe for you,” she said.

Lucius had not cried, but he had trembled in her arms as she kissed his lips.


	5. Chapter 5

** Disclaimer ** **: I don’t own it, and I am making no money off of it. **

** AN ** **: This drabble series takes place after the war. I have established that Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy are placed on house arrest for a year as punishment, along with being made to pay a great deal of money. These drabbles explore the aftermath of the trauma of war, Lucius’s time in Azkaban, and Lucius and Narcissa’s relationship. It is rated teen for dark themes, PTSD, and a few vague references to self-harm. It was written for Rayne. The theme for this drabble was righteous.**

The day after Lucius’s year of house arrest ended, he returned to the Ministry of Magic. Though Minister Shacklebolt hid it well, he was glad that Lucius was finally able to return. A year after the war, the Ministry was still trying to clean up the mess, and the holding cells in the lower levels, though finally empty of prisoners, were full to bursting with dark artifacts that only someone with the knowledge of Lucius Malfoy would know how to deal with. It was to that position that Lucius had been assigned.

Lucius found it unsettling to be back in the Ministry as a free man, a Ministry free of black robes and white masks and a not-quite-human megalomaniac serial killer. He had even been assigned to his old office. Lucius shuddered at that because it had briefly belonged to none other than Bellatrix Lestrange.

Lucius looked around warily, trying to convince himself that his insane sister-in-law’s laughter was not echoing off the walls. A step behind him had him whirling around with his wand drawn.

Arthur Weasley stood there, looking as startled as Lucius did. He watched as Lucius slowly lowered his wand and stared at him with grim resignation.

“Well, I see the prisoner has been freed at last. How does it feel to have bought your redemption one more time, Lucius? How does it feel to be the right and righteous one again?” Arthur’s blue eyes were tired and haunted. There was bitterness in his voice, and Lucius knew that one misstep would have Arthur at his throat and Lucius back in Azkaban. 

“No, Arthur,” Lucius said, in a voice that was for once devoid of arrogance and sarcasm. There was something there now which had not been there before…honesty.

“No, Arthur,” Lucius repeated. “You are the righteous one.”

Lucius had disappeared down the hall before Arthur Weasley realized that Lucius Malfoy had just paid him a compliment. 


End file.
